Working around OCR scanner

[Skybird]

I want to scan some text from a very thick book, via OCR. But the book is so thick that the pages cannot be pressed onto the scanner's glass completely, the printed text also reaches too close to the inside limit of the page. The optics cannot recognise the text and cannot focus on it there.

So I wonder whether there is a way to have OCR being done not from live scanner footage, but doing a good HiRes photography via digital cam, and have the text extracted from that photo via OCR.

I only know FreeOCR, and have a ten year old copy of Omnipage somewhere. Don't want to spend money on this task.

OCR text extraction from an digital photo, bypassing flatbed scanner - any ideas, suggestions?

[the_tyrant]

I know a guy who deals in antique books who swears by one of these:

http://www.fujitsu.com/us/services/computing/peripherals/scanners/scansnap/s1100.html


As for scanning with a camera, I know my phone has an app that can do this, maybe you can try looking for one for your phone?

[Skybird]

I tried two Android apps for my tablet. Terrible results.

I need no hardware, I have a scanner, a very good one, even specialising for scanning photographic negatives and blowing them up. I need a software that extracts text from existing hi-res photos/pictures and turns it into editable text.

I mean if you feed text from a leaf of paper in a scanner, what happens is that the scanner creates an image first anyway - from which the OCR software then extracts the text.

[Skybird]

Dang, maybe I had a slow day. I will try to photograph the book pages, print the images, and put these into the scanner then. :yeah: Hope this works.

[Madox58]

There's alot of software that can convert digital images the way you want.

There's even some free on-line converters that do a nice job at times.

[Platapus]

Our corporate library has a special (and very expensive) camera specifically designed for copying books. The software will automatically correct for the distortions caused by the bindings.

I have used it many times and I was surprised at how well it works. Well it should considering the cost. :D